We live and breath the SEO services industry every day. This means RFPs, contacts from our website, phone calls and emails from contacts we have in the industry. As you know from my endless opines, I have one of those annoying brains that has to make sense of everything. There are times I wish I could turn that off and just enjoy a stupid sit com. But I just am not built that way.
No, my brain likes to discover patterns in the noise. If you read about Chaos Theory back in the 90's this will sound familiar. I often think it's the human condition, perhaps my psychology background peeking through. And on this point I got an extra big dose of whatever hormone makes me tick this way. But bringing this back to SEO services, I have started to notice a trend in our search engine optimization customers when they approach us to discuss becoming a client. A few specific business "postures" - for lack of a better word - have become evident.
1) I know the words I want to rank on. The first SEO services shopper is the "I know what I want to rank on, can you help me?" These folks have very strong opinions about keywords. They are often armed with analytics to back up their assertions. Other times they are not, but they are confident enough in their intuition that they are ready to spend money on specific keywords. For these folks, I've found it's probably best to sell them what they want. Sure, be smart about it. Run the research and make sure you give them the truth about the words they have selected. But as long as you feel they are informed and you've been up-front, then sell them the whiskey they came to drink.
2) I need to make more money from SEO. The second posture we see a bunch is the less head-strong when it comes to keyword spaces. However, they are just as determined to improve their business with SEO services from a reputable vendor. These folks are more bottom-line oriented. They know that ranking high is great, but may not convert. Traffic is not the business objective for these people. Their focus is on conversion and profitability. On the PPC side of the house, we can easily show a return on ad spend (ROAS). But in SEO services, it is slightly more tricky. For these folks, we often recommend doing pilot-oriented PPC so we can test some keywords and see how they perform. We almost always see some surprises when we do this. After a month of this type of testing you can turn on the SEO services campaign and have confidence the investment will be returned.
Both buying postures are appropriate depending on your business. I don't mind working with either. I just find it interesting that most people fall squarely into one or the other. In the end, the SEO services we offer are the same really. Search engine optimization is not magic. We all know what to do. Semify just provides consistent execution and a fully transparent technology platform so you have a self-service view into the search marketing campaign.